Midnight Snacking
by Twilight Scribe
Summary: An account of J. Jonah Jameson's last moments as he's visited by an old... friend. Warning: Yummy, yummy gore on levels you would expect in a Marvel Zombies fic.


Disclaimer: Marvel Zombies is not mine, no matter how much stuff I write about it. 

AN: This is inspired by one panel of _Marvel Zombies: Dead Days_ that I acquired just recently. I think it's rather astounding what I was able to draw from one picture and two lines of dialog, but that's just me. The quotes are verbatim from the comic, by the way. You've got to love the quality writing that went into Marvel Zombies...

* * *

Up and down Broadway the lights were out, doors barred, and buildings abandoned. The scramble to escape the infectious zombie plague and marauding metahumans had driven most of the surviving people (who'd not yet been evacuated by the Resistance) out of the city, leaving it a veritable ghost town. But one light still burned on the top floor of the Daily Bugle. One man worked late into the night to fulfill his noble duty of keeping the people informed.

J. Jonah Jameson sat at his desk, pounding away on the keys of his now-antique typewriter, preparing a new editorial. For once it would be an article that didn't revolve around Spider-Man. It was instead about keeping safe around zombies and the most effective ways to remain uninfected. The safety of the people was the paramount issue.

That's not to say Jonah excluded all mention of the obnoxious arachnid. There was a small section of about eight paragraphs wherein the most objective and fair editor-in-chief of the Bugle crowed about how he'd been right all along. It's not every day that you get such wonderful, obvious evidence that someone's a menace, mostly because it's not every day that superheroes get turned into zombies and start eating people. Sure, there'd been no reports that Spider-Man had been infected yet, but JJ's newsman's instincts refused to allow him to pass up such a glowing opportunity.

As the intrepid editor finished writing his piece there came a loud _thwip-thump!_ noise from outside his window, interrupting the staccato beat of his fingers on the typewriter's keys. Jonah knew from long experience that that unique sound heralded a visit from his webbed nemesis. He swiveled in his chair and looked towards the now-opening window, fully prepared to match the furious tongue-lashing he knew was soon to occur.

Whatever courage Jonah had scraped together evaporated as Spider-Man lifted the Venetian blinds that had been obscuring the view outside the office. Instead of the red, web-patterned facade and reflective white eyes the editor had come to expect, he beheld a gruesome, nightmarish vision. Spider-Man's mask had ripped to reveal his nose and jaw, both of which were quickly decaying and slathered in blood. One of the mask's perfectly white lenses had been shattered, the eye behind it also white as it had rolled up into his head. Blood, mesenteries, and other bodily fluids were splattered down the front of his costume; dyeing it a deeper shade of red and complimented by the human fingernail, painted a light pink, that was lodged in the webspinner's jagged teeth.

For a moment the brave and peerless editor held perfectly still, stunned into silence. Then he began to scream.

"Oh no..."

What made the situation truly horrifying wasn't that Jonah knew he was about to be eaten alive or the now-apparent irony of the editorial he'd been writing just minutes ago. Those were factors in it, but what hit Jonah the hardest was that Spider-Man had fallen.

Throughout the years JJ had seen just what levels of heroism Spider-Man was capable of; what a fundamentally good, responsible, self-sacrificing person the man behind the mask really was. He would never admit it if asked, but at times, though he had always continued his various smear campaigns, Jonah had been jealous of Spider-Man. The webspinner was exactly the sort of good man that J. Jonah Jameson had always desired, strove to be, but never achieved.

To see Spider-Man now, as a zombie draped in human gore and entrails; to see a once proud and upright man transformed into little more than a ravening animal... It was more than Jonah could bear.

"NO!"

As J. Jonah Jameson, editor-in-chief of the Daily Bugle, howled the denial that would be his last word, the viscera-drenched figure perched in the window chuckled quietly to himself. Whatever instinct it was that had driven him here, he was glad for it. Devouring Jonah was a stroke of brilliance on his id's part. Spider-Man moved down off the windowsill and took a small step into the room, reveling in Jonah's terrified expression.

"I'm going to enjoy this!"

Oh, they say that revenge is sweet, but it seems that newspaper editors actually taste more like chicken. Jonah in particular, a cigar-smoking chicken.

* * *

AN: I was thinking people would taste like beef... But since I know Jonah's character, and out of respect for the classics, I chose chicken. 


End file.
